User:Nova.WIM/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Spent nuclear fuel

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I am interested in nuclear energy and I knew that nuclear waste is often said to have detrimental impacts on the environment. I chose this specific article because it seemed rather short and not as well developed as other articles on the connected topics.

Evaluate the article
Lead section:

I would say that the lead section includes details that are unnecessary, while also not presenting a good overview. It is, however, concise.

Content:

The content is all relevant to the topic, but I don't think that attention to the subtopics is allocated well. There is a focus on the composition of spent nuclear fuel, with comparatively little attention paid to storage, treatment, disposal, remediation, risks, and environmental impacts. I understand that the nature of the spent nuclear waste should perhaps be the main component of the article, but there is far too little time devoted to the other aforementioned sections. There should be more attention paid to these sub topics because they are a key aspect of the significance of spent nuclear waste.

Tone and balance:

Overall, the tone and balance of this article seems to be a strong point. I do not have much to critique on this front.

Sources and references:

The majority of the sources cited are pre 2012, but there are a couple that are very current. I would say that the sources could be updated to keep the information more current. Almost all of the sources are from credible sources such as scientific journals. About a third of the links within the references section do not work. The spottiness of the links is the worst part of the citations in this article. There are a couple paragraphs in here where there is no explicit citation visible, which is clearly a weak point, but most of the article uses adequate citations especially when specific details are involved.

Organization and writing quality:

The article is broken down into manageable sections. The sections do not have topic sentences, rather, they act as continuations for the previous sections, rather than truly distinct segments. The writing is clunky, but outright errors are not common.

Images and Media:

The image quality is poor. The graphs are informative, but the captions are overly complex. The images adhere to copyright rules. The images are small and unappealing visually. They also do very little to enhance the understanding of the topic.

Talk page discussion:

The page is flagged as of interest to Physics, Technology, and Environment WikiProjects. Technology has it rated at C-class, physics has it rated at low importance start-class, and environment has it rated as Start-class high-importance. There is very little discussion to speak of, and the little there is is from 2006. Someone suggested that this article be merged with radioactive waste, while a short string of comments discussed semantics of terminology.

Overall impressions:

This article does well in providing a neutral perspective, but it is lacking in almost every other way. It is clearly the beginning of an article, but it has not received adequate editing and expansion. The citations need to be updated and the links need to work. The overall structure of the article is mediocre, as the sections are not truly distinct, but they do theoretically exist.